(Entered in paper journal at 7:34 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)
Dream #1
I was sitting in a library, like the Mid-Manhattan Library on the fifth floor and east side. Some daylight came into the space from windows beyond the books stacks to my right, but the place was mainly lit by fluorescent light.
I stood up and walked into the stacks. I had a pile of books with me. I started to put them all back where I had gotten them, all from different locations in one aisle of shelves. There was a lot more sunlight through the shelves, with probably a triangle of sunlight at the end of the shelves next to the windows.
As I put the books back, a couple people walked through the aisle. One of them, a young, Hispanic girl with pale olive skin and red-brown hair, was putting books back on the shelf, as if she worked at the library.
I was watching the people who walked through the aisles out of the corner of my eye. I wanted to make sure they didn't see and take the books I was putting back on the shelves: I still needed those books. Nobody seemed to be paying attention.
I was almost finished putting the books back when a man (tallish, white, a little tan, with short, brownish hair, who was maybe in his fifties and was thin but with body a little sagging and wrinkled, and who wore a white polo shirt and tan khakis) walked just behind me.
The man said in a slightly effeminate voice either that I shouldn't put the books back myself or that I should be paying better attention to where I was putting the books. The girl, the man said, was really working hard to put back a lot of books. The girl couldn't take the time to fix any mistakes I'd make. I felt guilty for having put my books back so quickly, although I was pretty sure I'd put them all back correctly.
I went to check on one book. I still had a couple books to put away, and I'd sat them on an empty space of shelf. I looked at the book I'd come to check on. The book was hard covered, with a solid grey cover, and maybe 250 pages. I noticed, by checking the Dewey decimal number, that I'd put the book just out of place. I thought, Gosh, now I really will have to check all the books.
I was about to start checking when I realized I'd made a much bigger mistake. I had actually checked out all the books away. Instead of checking them back in, I had simply placed them back on the shelves. Now I would have to pull all the books back off the shelves. I'd have to remember every single book I'd taken, more by decimal number or actual position on the shelf than by title, as if I couldn't remember the title of any of the books I'd checked out.
It seemed like too much work to me. I thought for a moment that I'd just leave all the books on the shelf. But I realized that if I left everything, I'd be counted as having kept the books, even though they were in the library. And I'd be charged a lot of overdue fees. So, as difficult as it would be, I'd have to take the books back off the shelves.
I was now on the first floor of the library. It was dim. Daylight came in through the windows: sky-blue and white-grey. There were no electric lights on on the floor. The area was large, with tall ceilings, like the Mid-Manhattan library. But the library felt more like a college library in the southwestern United States, with white walls dark wood trim, and possibly a large god's eye ornament decorating one of the walls.
I sat before a female librarian. She sat on the other side of a table which she used as a desk. Behind the librarian, across a short walkway, was a row of filing cabinets or microfiche machines (or computers?).
I was looking for a book to check out (possibly The Gilded Age, which I had bought from the Housing Works Bookstore in waking life in the day before this dream.). I may have seen this book on the shelf upstairs. I may even have been holding the book in my hands. But the woman told me that there wasn't a copy of this book at the library. She'd have to request the book from another library.
I asked the woman how long it would take to get the book. The woman said she could put in a request, which would take a couple days. But Monday was a holiday. So I wouldn't get the book until Tuesday at the earliest.
This seemed like an awfully long time to wait, and I wasn't even sure I'd get it, even if I went through the hassle of ordering it. I felt terribly insecure, like the woman really didn't want to help me after all.
Dream #2
I was in a 1950s-style diner. The place was tight and crowded, like some of the old downtown diners. The diner had a small and strange feel, like it was a double-wide trailer set off a road somewhere, or a small, flimsy field office for an archaeologist, or even a child's playhouse set up to look like a diner. The ceiling seemed small. The walls were all close, maybe paneled with wood in vertical strips. By the door was a small, bedstead-like shelf, possibly with a couple phone books on the shelves.
The scene was like a movie. A group of older men sat in a booth. A younger man (possibly like Ewan McGregor from Trainspotting) stood before the counter. He was possibly heading for the door. But before the Ewan character opened the front door, the old men, like mafia men, said, "This is it. You've owed us this money long enough. We've given you chances to pay us. Now you better just watch your back. You better be careful."
The Ewan character took a little of a supplicant tone, possibly even hunching over one of the swivel stools before the counter, and said he would pay the money, if the old men would only give him a little more time. Ewan left the diner.
I saw the area outside. The day was hot and grey. There was a wide road over which I highway overpass ran. On the other side of the street that ran under the overpass was a thin, triangular median, which was probably made of asphalt. On the other side of the median was another, smaller road, on the other side of which were some small shops like mechanics or auto shops, then a wide residential road lined with run-down looking houses and apartment buildings.
The Ewan character ran across the street. I watched him until he approached the median, at which point my view may have changed. I knew the Ewan character was now really trying to figure out how to get the money he owed the mob guys. I thought it was possibly for the Ewan character to get the money. But, I thought, the guys already told him they were out for him. They aren't giving him any more time. He's in danger right now.
I saw a young, blonde woman, probably the Ewan character's girlfriend, walking with an old man. The old man wore a long-sleeved t-shirt and a thin, billed cap: both items he may have gotten from participating in a volunteer event or running in a race. The blonde woman and old man came out of a wooden, shack-like building that seemed to be set into an old, small junkyard or tire yard. I thought that the Ewan character would run up at any time soon to enlist his girlfriend for help.
At first, not seeing Ewan, I thought that I wasn't seeing right, and that the person I saw as an old man was actually Ewan. But then I noticed that the old man was small, thin, and wasted, with either injured legs or no legs at all, and that he was using forearm crutches to walk. There was no way this old man could be Ewan.
The woman and the man crossed a wide asphalt road, then turned left around a wide corner of vacant lots and houses to a wide, run-down residential road. The old man walked ahead of the woman. The woman fell far behind the man.
Another man ran, somewhat stealthily, up behind the old man, also possibly thinking, like I had thought, that the old man was the Ewan character. The other man threw a tube, like a metal tube of paint, in the man's direction. I knew this tube was really a bomb. I wanted to call to the man, to protect him. But I didn't.
The paint tube, possibly with dried paint (or caulk?) layered on its surface near the cap, flew over the old man's head and landed maybe ten or fifteen feet in front of the old man. The tube "exploded." It made a loudish, hollow, popping sound, but did nothing visual. But there were airy shock waves that knocked the man over.
I could tell, as the old man flew backward and to the ground, that more damage had been done to him. He'd probably sustained some pretty severe injuries in his limbs. I thought, Now that this has happened to the old man, will the Ewan character fight the mob guys?
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